California, Washington ponder Internet voting

(IDG) -- More than 20 California election officials and data security experts gathered last week to discuss voter authentication, privacy and the likelihood that cybervoting will overtake existing voting methods.

California Secretary of State Bill Jones last week convened a first meeting of the state's new online voting task force, making California the first state to organize a commission to look into online voting. But Washington state Secretary of State Ralph Munro quickly followed by asking his state's legislature to create a similar task force.

"The current voting process can be made much more user-friendly with the use of technology. But we must not sacrifice privacy and security for ease of access," said Jones in a statement. The California task force will meet monthly and present findings by the end of the year to Jones' office. The state legislature will have to approve Internet voting before the state can use its Internet presence to conduct any political races.

Meanwhile in other techno-political news, millionaire magazine publisher Steve Forbes used the Internet last week to announce his candidacy for president, declaring himself the first candidate to do so. By day's end, the presidential hopeful claimed he had received four million hits on his site. Forbes promised to run the first full-scale campaign on the Internet in order to more closely involve citizens in his run for president.